Tag Archives: carsey-wolf center

The UCSB Script to Screen series just completed its fourth and most successful season to date. We hosted three special Academy screenings (Whiplash, The Theory of Everything, and The Grand Budapest Hotel) where we connected Oscar nominees with students and the Santa Barbara Academy/Guild community. We also expanded our series to include a focus on television with our 10th Anniversary of Lost with Executive Producer/Director Jack Bender. This season our guests of honor shared key lessons about the importance of personally connecting to the material as well as having a family-esque support system to help bring the script to the screen.

“In 2004, that was the real catalyzing moment for me when I read Jane Hawking’s auto-biography. Everything I thought I knew about Stephen Hawking was displaced by everything I didn’t know. This was a unique, emotional insight into his private life. This incredible love story, very much one of a kind, unprecedented in some ways, challenging, heartbreaking, triumphant. I thought if I can get the rights to that book and marry it with the public world and what we know of Stephen and his public story, you know we would really have something special.”

“I was a drummer when I was in high school, and I had a teacher that was very much in this mold. It was the sort of thing where drumming had been this sort of hobby for myself that I did not take that seriously. As soon as I got in the orbit of this conductor/this teacher and his big band that he ran, he suddenly felt like life or death everyday. I felt the worse thing possible would be to screw up a hit or a beat. I just remember the daily dose of dread that I would feel during that time. I don’t play that much anymore, but you get a lot of fodder from that sort of emotional experience. It occurred to me that there might be a subject for a movie there.”

“This was very much a cathartic thing. I’d been broken up with, didn’t understand why, could not accept that it was just that she didn’t feel the same and then a minute later she got engaged, and I was like, What in the world? I was writing to put it all out there.”

The UCSB Script to Screen series returns in October 2015 for its 5th season. This coming year we will be expanding to include more actors on the stage with the screenwriter. Plus, we are currently planning a major event with a frontrunner to the 2016 Best Picture nominee and with a very special guest.

UC Santa Barbara takes pride in its beautiful beachfront location on the bluffs above the sand — but owning property directly on the coast comes with risk.

The Carsey-Wolf Center presents a series of lectures that tackle the problem of sea level rise and what – if anything – can be done about. The first episode gathers a variety earth science and architectural experts to examine what might happen to Santa Barbara and other shorelines as sea levels rise.

The bluffs have been slowly eroding since the beginning of their existence, but what happens as the sea levels rise more quickly due to global warming? What options are there to avoid massive destruction? Should we build large or larger defensive sea walls or will we be forced to retreat from the crumbling cliffs?

There are films that are undeniable works of art. Others are just plain awful. And then there are those movies that, when you stumble across them on cable for the hundredth time, demand to be watched yet again.

What makes a movie so undeniably watchable? If Hollywood had the answer, epic bombs would be a thing of the past. But one way to get at least a little bit closer to this elusive secret is to learn from those who’ve managed to do it themselves. That’s what the “Script to Screen” series from UC Santa Barbara’s Carsey-Wolf Center, now available online, offers as it brings together creative talent to share their stories behind some modern classics.

Script to Screen: Back to the Future
Screenwriter and producer Bob Gale joins Christopher Lloyd, who played Dr. Emmett Brown, to share rare insights into the ” Back to the Future” series.

Script to Screen: Dead Poets Society
“Dead Poets Society” won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay in 1989 and tells the story of an English teacher (Robin Williams) who uses poetry to inspire his students to seize the day and follow their own life path. Screenwriter Tom Schulman talks about writing the script, and inspires all of the screenwriters in the audience to pursue their own dreams.

Script to Screen: 10 Things I Hate About YouScreenwriting duo Kirsten Smith and Karen McCullah Lutz bring down the house with their hilarious inside Hollywood stories. In addition to “10 Things I Hate About You,” their other films include “Legally Blonde,” “She’s the Man,” “The House Bunny,” “The Ugly Truth,” and “Ella Enchanted.”

If you’re craving more tales from the heart of Hollywood, check out the rest of the Carsey-Wolf series, named for legendary TV producers Marcy Carsey (“The Cosby Show,” “Roseanne”) and Dick Wolf (“Law & Order), featuring an impressive roster of talent making some of the most popular entertainment today.

Today it’s a permanent fixture in American popular culture, but the “Back to the Future” script was rejected over 40 times before it finally made it into production and, once it hit theaters in 1985, into our hearts.

In the first installment of the exciting new “Script to Screen” series from UC Santa Barbara’s esteemed Carsey-Wolf Center, legendary actor Christopher Lloyd, who so memorably portrayed flux capacitor inventor Dr. Emmett Brown, and “Back to the Future” screenwriter and producer Bob Gale sit down for an entertaining trip down memory lane as they share rare insights into the creation and enduring appeal of Marty McFly’s time travel adventures.

Watch “Script to Screen: Back to the Future,” online now. And stay tuned to UCTV for a conversation with “Dead Poets Society” screenwriter Tom Schulman and the hilarious Hollywood insider stories told by Kirsten Smith and Karen McCullah Lutz, writers of “10 Things I Hate About You,” “Legally Blonde,” and more.